The subject matter disclosed herein relates generally to ultrasound imaging, and more particularly, to application specific integrated circuits for use with beamforming assemblies for ultrasound imaging.
Medical diagnostic ultrasound is an imaging modality that employs ultrasound waves to probe the acoustic properties of the body of a patient and produce a corresponding image. Generation of sound wave pulses and detection of returning echoes is typically accomplished via a plurality of transducer elements located in the probe. Such transducer elements are capable of converting electrical energy into mechanical energy for transmission and mechanical energy back into electrical energy for receiving purposes. Some ultrasound probes include up to thousands of transducer elements arranged as linear arrays or a 2D matrix of elements.
Since the quality and resolution of a resulting image is largely a function of the size and number of transducer elements in such arrays, advanced systems typically incorporate the greatest number of transducer elements possible. However, since each transducer element typically is coupled to control circuitry, an increase in the number of transducer elements results in an associated increase in the complexity of the control circuitry.